OUR STORY



The Mason burger, dreamt up by chef Ivan Zidar, is the best Croatian burger of 2017 an 2018 according to visitor review and Gastro critics at the Zagreb Burger Festival.
Driven by the will to transform the burger into a superior gourmand specialty we have successfully thrilled enthusiasts across Europe with our original recipe and an unexpected flavour combo.

The burger concept was created as a response to the popularising forgotten recipes and revival of tradition. Mason burgers&stuff adjusts to its regional context since we take the best local ingredients and transform them into top quality burgers with a local signature.

The ongoing work of improving our burgers does not only lead to better quality, but also to broad burger offers, however the basics always remain the same: top brioche bun, quality meat and of course the unavoidable ingredients and sauces that give Mason burgers a distinctive and recognizable taste.



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OUR CHEF




Ivan's love and understanding of local ingredients and the endless curiosity of experimenting in the kitchen are the main driving force of his cooking. Today, Ivan Zidar is leading the Mason burgers&stuff team with a focus on quality, innovation and performance excellence.

His love for food has followed him since his childhood, but it would take some time for him to hear the lifelong call of culinary and it was this call that would drive him to switch his career as a graphic designer and video director to that of a chef.

It was in 2014 that he decided to enrol in a prestigious cooking school in Lyon, one named after the prominent chef and gourmet innovator Paul Bocuse. He invested a lot of time and effort into perfecting his skills and later worked with renowned restaurants in Slovenia and Croatia (Pri Lojzetu, Valsabion and Lanterna to name a few), and his themed evenings in the Lanterna restaurant thrilled even the most demanding of palates. After returning from France he would sail around Europe on a yacht of an Ukrainian entrepreneur cooking for him and his guests. Following these travels, he founded the street food bar "PlacE" in Pula, where he presented an intriguing gastro story with selected foods from the best Istrian family farms. In a bar he prepared Korean-Chinese-Italian-Croatian fusion using local ingredients. The ingredients he works with are those of top quality, regarding both source and farming as well as the manner of their preparation and presentation. 


Mason burgers gain recognition in no time at all

The food of 40-year-old Ivan Zidar from Pula finally won the public's attention when his Špaleta burger was proclaimed the best at the Zagreb Burger Festival in September of 2017. After collecting various experiences, the chef decided to go a step further and introduce his own gourmet burger with top quality ingredients and the original recipe for the most demanding of palates, and the result is quite different from the usual burgers one would find in fast food restaurants. After six months of developing the burger concept, with three months going only into baking work, the Mason burgers&stuff burgers were live and were initially offered to beach bars and pubs across Croatia. Mason burgers&stuff burgers have been proclaimed the best burger at the Zagreb Burger Festival 2018 in two categories and are now being exported to other European cities as well.

Although burgers Mason burgers&stuff thirll gourmands well beyond the borders of Croatia, Ivan Zidar admits that he still has the unfulfilled desire to open a farm-to-table restaurant with his own garden, where his guests could see how the food on their plate is grown.



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REVIEWS & PRESS





︎KULT PLAVE KAMENICE
︎September 2018

"Mason Burgers&stuff from Pula, the first successful Croatian hamburger franchise, is the winner of the appraisal by editors and reviewers of leading Croatian gastro-media on blind tasting as the main line-up of this year's Zagreb Burger Festival. Mason's double burger smoked during its resting period was a convincing winner in a not very strong competition. Succulent, sweet, medium roast meat emphasized with just a few supplements, in which the little over-fatty mayonnaise with smoked pancetta was salvaged by the palatable smoked cheese."
︎YACHTS MAGAZINE
︎December 2017

"Mason burger - Pula / Fast Food makes a grand entrance into the world of top quality cuisine. Wanted in their own world by top-notch chefs or not is absolutely irrelevant, because it is carefully designed and tailored to the sophisticated palate of modern gourmets and cannot fit anywhere but in the circle of privileged creators of fine gastronomy. This is a slippery slope as  it is easiest to give up since there are hamburger enthusiasts around every corner, so survival is not an issue, but to include a hamburger in a society that has a reason to hope for a Michelin star, is equal to the kind of madness that adorns a genius. So, it was in Pula that Ivan Zidar created Croatia’s best burger – the Mason burger. Brionka’s special bun, špaleta patty and arugula is the winning combination where the “less is more” rule applies. Mason is a world of its own that You must try for Yourself.”
︎GASTRO.HR / RIBAFISH
︎September 2017

“Mason burgers&stuff – This is a kiss by Sophia Loren, seriously will rested meat with the nostalgic smell of cellar, grit, grandma’s pantry... A definitive winner!”

︎CONTACT
Mason Burgers & Stuff
Zagreb / Croatia 
info@masonburgers.com



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